Place of Origin
I am sensitive to how well the war in Iraq plays out. How it
will impact on American influence and prestige. On America's moral
authority. Not that that rests on Iraq entirely or even the middle east. I
hear the criticism - of the criticisms. I take them seriously, even as
I don't take their messengers seriously. We went into Iraq on a bizzare
enterprise of dubious provence. We broke the Iraq that existed unveiled
a model of a new Iraq and forced people to take sides. That places an
obligation on us. Some take that obligation as justifying the whole. That
if the current objective is right then criticizing any part of it is
wrong, that it weakens the effort. A line the administration and its
supporters suggest: that the fortunes of this state impeded allows the
use of anything to contain any perceived threat. That no further
legitimacy is needed than this need and the power to compel it by force.
Also that however and wherever our soldiers stand. Standing behind
them, supporting them, requires we acquiesce to, even explicity sign on
to the policies of current administration.
I feel a pang of conscience for how the Vietnam war ended. It
did not end well. I remember thinking that at the time. I should not
like to see South Vietnams fate replicated in Iraq. I don't want us to
hold on through another U S election cycle then back out leaving the
government in Iraq to be cut to shreds by baathist's and theocrats.
This sense has been sharpened by knowing my friend Tran, my smart and
lovely friend Tran, these last few years. She remembers the end of the
war too, her family was ordered out of their home in Saigon back to to
her fathers town of origin. She grew up in a system that never stopped
telling her that families like hers were bad people possibly in need of
comprehensive "re-education". She of course was a wee tiny little
thing back then.
I am very aware that in her view of things republicans are the
defenders of freedom, undercut by the weak willed democrats, who would
then be its enemies. This is an oversimplification. But you can't help
how you feel. I believe one of the first things she did as an American citizen
is join the republican party.
Tran's Vietnam is the original Vietnam, the decisions of
those days still live in some lives. I see the example of her life
cutting across this debate both ways. On one hand Vietnam exists as a
stark example of a shameful broken trust. On the other the quality of
living in Vietnam after armed re-unification, should be a retort to
rallying in on a simplistic patriotism: "My country right or wrong."
"[Country x] love it or leave it, ingrate." Calls for automatic and
uncritical support for the designs of the few or even of the many (I
know of no "peoples" government which actually consist of the many, but
either way...) beacuse anything less than a guarded unaniminity is a
threat, ought to be brushed off and ignored.
The fall of South Vietnam left the Catholic and American
associated populace locked out of the prevailing culture. Patriotism
belonged to the Viet minh. Nothing to the rest. Tran could not
rationalize her countries behavior. Equate it with right exercise of
power. Could not justify its ways and allotment of privilege. Could not
accord it legitimacy. She became unreconcilably alienated from it. The
part of her family that stayed, learned that when the government knows
your have relatives in the west you cannot get work. They essentially
force the family to remit the livehood of those remaining. A few
weeks ago she was part of a group that stood downtown in a cold
November rain to protest a group from Vietnam that was in the U S
raising money for Vietnamese victims of Katrina. They had no use for
Hanoi's hypocritic grandstanding - no common cause - and were inclined
to say so. They wanted the delegation out of the country.
Leaving her homeland can be read as an explicit admission
that home, home being land plus a people and how they live on it, is
not the ultimate depositary of truth and feeling. The emigrants of this
world for better or worse in the slender baggage of their motavation,
show by getting up and walking away from a place, their place, a desire
for greater justice than coercion and mere order. Greater autonomy than
obedience.
11:41:44 PM  ;;
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